Scientific Nutrition and the Farm Output

Abstract

Improvements in agriculture began with the improvement through selection of the wild ancestors of our cultivated plants. This process is still going on. Agriculture was greatly advanced through the invention of effective farm implements. Chemistry has contributed a knowledge of the nature of the soil and the composition of the plant sufficiently complete to give us an understanding of the nature and kinds of fertilization which promote plant growth and prevent soil exhaustion. The efficiency of the farmer has been advanced through the development of special varieties of crops suitable for particular types of soil and climate. Improved transportation has extended the range of profitable agriculture. Up to the present time, however, the farmer has been essentially ignorant of the principles underlying the effective use of the products which he has produced, either in the feeding of his children or his animals. The science of nutrition is not yet mature, and so it is not possible to predict with any degree.of certainty how effective an aid it may become for the advancement of human health and happiness, or for promoting the economic welfare of the nation. It is certain, however, that we are now in a position to avoid some of the more important mistakes which have been made in the past by no small proportion of even fairly successful farmers. The writer well remembers several occasions in his boyhood on a farm in eastern Kansas, when a hundred or more pigs were converted into unprofitable runts by being kept in a dry lot and fed for a time solely upon corn. No better example of the denseness of ignorance of even the simplest principles of feeding can be given than to point out that fifteen years ago no one seems to have been aware that a hog could not grow if fed all it wanted of one of our common cereal grains.